


Magus

by TaraethysHolmes



Series: Criterion [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Hurt, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 13:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15842337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraethysHolmes/pseuds/TaraethysHolmes
Summary: "All this was a long time ago, I rememberAnd I would do it again, but set downThis set down." - T.S. Eliot, Journey of the MagiGreg's old. He knows it. He's old when the books he read smile up at him mockingly with bright text and nameless art. He's old when his bones creak and his flat creaks and cold seeps into his flesh.There's a journey to take. A question to ask, and a question to answer. And in the silence before dawn he can perhaps reach out.





	Magus

**Author's Note:**

> Again, like with Prufrock, there are literary references. You also don't need to read Prufrock to get this, they both stand alone, but are set at the same time, just from different perspectives.  
> And, like with Prufrock, I've put all the literary references at the end and my explanation to go with them. Greg's a simpler man than Mycroft, though. He lives more in the moment. So the allusions I do use are less oblique, more explicit.

_A cold coming we had of it,_

_Just the worst time of year_

_For a journey, and such a long journey:_

_The ways deep and the weather sharp,_

_The very dead of winter._

***

            The cold seemed to soak right through Greg Lestrade’s bones, as he meandered his way back through his front door, dumping his keys in the bowl on the side table. They landed there with a clang-clatter of metal on wood, ringing out into the silence.

            A divorced-man’s flat spread out in front of him, utterly miserable in its barrenness. Miserable, miserable.

            That really was the defining descriptor of his life. Barren of anything, but a few sparks of hope on the horizon.

            This deep into winter the cold penetrated the flat, leaking in under the door and between the wood and the windows. Out through the curtains as if they were made of paper, creeping up the walls and through into his cold, hard mattress.

            Greg tossed his jacket to one side, casting it to rest over the side-table. It thumped down with a soft _whump_ , the sound the only thing that lived inside the flat. Everything else was dead – it was too cold. He hadn’t even seen an ant crawling up the side of his fridge for _weeks._ Bloody London for you.

            Grumbling quietly, Greg staggered through into the bedroom, flicking through his closet ‘til he found the closest pair of tracksuit bottoms, the scruffiest, most threadbare t-shirt, and the thickest robe he could find, and tossed them on. Then, he padded back out into the lounge, slamming a hand into the heater in an effort to get the creaky system to work.

            It fluttered to life with a groan, and a slight breeze of warm air wafted out of the vents, meandering its way down to fold over his frozen limbs.

            Taking a moment to enjoy it, Greg closed his eyes.

            There was a pounding headache forming in his skull, beating away a rhythm. The images of cases danced behind his eyelids, an open-and-shut suicide, a mugging gone awry, the images of grisly bodies and dead corpses, left in their final state of _mort._ Splattered over cream-coloured carpet, laid out as if sleeping on pale tiles, blood leaking out from half-closed eyes.

            You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

            Out of the corner of his eye, Greg noticed he had left the curtains open. Wandering over, he took a quick look outside.

            The street was only just clearing up for the night, the last workers parallel-parking their cars on the edge of the road. Off in the distance the sounds of the early-evening revellers began to filter through, out on the main street. The sky itself was fading to black, the first glimmering suggestions of stars could be seen glinting their way overhead.

            Sighing, Greg quietly closed the curtains, and stepped back over to where he had left an abandoned crime thriller resting on the arm of his sofa. It was shitty, really, no quality to it whatsoever, but he figured there ain’t anything else better to do.

            A _thunk_ down onto the couch, and that was the final sound Greg heard in the flat. Briefly, again, Greg let his heavy lids fall shut, leaning his head back onto the sofa behind him.

            On the far wall, a clock was ticking its merry way along. Far off in the distance, the sounds of the evening-goers could be heard, a distant hum of merriment and vague interest. A vague action that had no bearing on him. His own breaths, inhale, exhale, humming through his body.

            He almost missed her, for a solid moment. He almost missed her moving around the flat, no matter how icy her presence may have been, no matter how much she may have glared through his skull. She was at least someone who could meander through the rooms, padding quietly, chatting softly on the phone to her lovers. Quietly fiddling with dinner, but she was someone.

            Someone to fill the empty space now echoing around him. Someone to come home to, to greet with a smile even if it wasn’t returned. Someone who he could look at and know was there.

            Until she wasn’t of course.

            Greg startled himself by letting out a bitter laugh, letting it sit in the atmosphere of the room like a bad smell,

            It wasn’t enough, was it? Nothing was ever going to _be_ enough.

            There was a moment, today, where he had thought… _perhaps._

            But to no avail.

            The warmth of Baker Street in the early evening. Thanking Sherlock, the poor bugger, for his help. Thanking him, while Rosie swung around his shoulders and John smiled at him over a cup of tea. Sherlock; waved his hand dismissively and simply turned his back, far more occupied with seeking out John’s adoring gaze.

            And that moment… perhaps.

            If he had asked, would he have been allowed to stay? Would he have been allowed to sit around that small, worn table with scratch marks on the legs and eat dinner with those three?

            Maybe, he would have been allowed. He would have been allowed to sit there, with sea-coal flames upon the hearth, as they all took their well-worn ease? And perhaps, for just a moment, everything might have stopped, everything might have just paused, and he could have taken a moment to breathe easy. To not worry.

            To be safe, and warm, for just a moment in time.

            But he could not.

            He could not impose upon them in that fashion. He could not ask of them more than a moment’s rest from the cold for there were far more things he couldn’t know. So many things folding between them in the warm and quiet, things between those two he could never be privy to.

            And at the peak of that pinnacle of regret and denial?

            That man, leaning on his umbrella, with his suits pinstriped and perfect, red hair receding in a neat line over his head, like troops retreating from battle.

            Greg remembered reading something, once. Something from back when he’d done Literature as an A-level, when everything seemed so hopeful and bright.

            A brave man reaching out his sword and crying over the hills to march into battle. Young women validating their lives from the liminal spaces of nannies and housemaids and tutors.

            A narrator in a red dress with wings pulled about her face, a new piece from Canada which had sunk into his soul. _They made a TV show about it_ , he thought. A disturbing thing full of violence and hatred and bitterness.

            And the cowards, of course. The cowards in Literature were numerous, the Hamlets, who couldn’t make up their bloody mind whether to believe the ghosts floating in front of their faces. The coward of Stephen Crane, who ran away from the army for no particular reason other than the monsters under his bed. Dimmesdale’s avoidance, his unwillingness to speak up for the innocent woman cast out of society.

            Greg had never really understood them. Not until recently, but now cowardice was certainly the easier option.

            Easier that then disturbing the universe. Easier that than wandering out into the unknown, because men with red hair and power were waiting to cast him down.

            And was this not enough?

            Bravery was idiotic. It got people killed. It hurt people. God, how it hurt people.

            A blond doctor torn from the inside out, ripping himself to shreds over the breathless body of a best friend.

            The book that had been waiting for him was still sitting there on the arm of the sofa. It seemed to mock him, grinning up at him in its insipidity.

            A train, ghosting out of the station, blurred in an artistic manner. An author’s name in obnoxious yellow, glaring up at him. It almost hurt his eyes.

            Softly, reaching out a single hand to rest on the cover. Should he pick it up? Should he even bother?

            It was too much effort, surely. Too much time to waste in the insipid pages, waiting for a conclusion he could see from a mile off. He was a bloody detective, after all. No matter how much Sherlock might call him an idiotic one.

            Slowly, Greg got back up, his bones creaking. He was old.

            Old, and tired, a worn-out copper with nothing much more waiting for him.

            Perhaps a few people would notice when he left.

            A few people might notice when he finally meandered his way off the mortal coil.

            This was the ending, he guessed. He’d already finished his journey, reached the garden then fucked it up.

            Good job, Lestrade.

            Look up to the skies and see, mate.

            Then again, who hadn’t regretted a few trips in their life? Bad lot in Belize, end up chucking your guts out down some old loo, mugged in South Africa and whacked a bit over the head… that sort of thing.

            Everyone was so new, now, compared to him.

            Donovan, Anderson, Dimmock, Gregson… they were all newer, younger, fresher than he was. Cleverer, too. Cleverer than one beaten out, worn-down old copper.

            No.

            That’s tomorrow’s problem.

            Shaking his fractured, fevered thoughts from his brain, Greg wandered through his flat, heading towards the bathroom before heading to bed.

            The flat had warmed nicely while his creaky old mind had waddled through a few miserable thoughts. It was fully dark outside, the clock ticking its way towards midnight. He must have fallen asleep for a moment.

            He hadn’t thought he’d sat there for long.

            But, it seemed that he was wrong. It seemed that he had thought for longer than he first could have ever imagined.

            God, he was old.

            He remembered a time when he was young; energetic and lively, ready to pursue _her_ as hard as he possibly could, flowers and chocolates – the works. Remembered when he was still young enough to enjoy his job, to wake up every morning full of life and energy and purpose, ready to fight the good fight, so to speak.

            Tipping into his bed was like hitting a slab of concrete.

            Better concrete-like than actual concrete, he guessed.

            The only comfort was his doona, soft and warm as it settled over his body.

            This was perhaps his most lovely memory in recent times, folding himself up under the warmth of the covers, snuggling into a pillow, silently wishing it was something else. Silently fooling himself into thinking it was something else. Safe from the cold creeping up the walls and through the curtains and between the window and the wood.

            Cold reaching out its clinging fingers to fold around his frame.

            One day, maybe, he’d take another journey. One day, he might be able to quietly slip off onto a plane, fly out to the Seychelles, or Aruba, maybe even a nice warm beach in Australia where no-one was able to bug him about being an idiot, tempt him with red hair and pale skin, freckles like a thousand constellations dotted over a nose in the middle of the night, sitting next to a hospital bed while the blood of black curls and blue eyes flooded out onto pale bandages.

            He was tipping over the edge into fantasy, now. He was tipping over the edge into sleep.

***

            Soft, silent darkness awaits him as he wakes. The soft, comforting weight of a quiet, promising dawn.

            He can feel it in his bones.

            The clock ticks away in the other room.

            Getting to his feet, Greg rubs his eyes. On instinct, he wanders out to the lounge room.

            ‘Shit.’

            He’s almost missed it.

            The clock’s ticking away at him meaningfully, the scent of the old heater washing through the air like fog on a cold morning.

            He can just hear the humming of revellers, out on the main street, a lifetime away.

            Ever so distant.

            It’s become some sort of tradition, between them. He doesn’t know if the tall, pinstriped man knows he knows. He doesn’t know if he knows in the first place.

            He isn’t even sure if he’s supposed to know, or not.

            The first time; a ghostly presence on the other side of the road as he got up to get a paracetamol for a headache that wouldn’t go away. The second, a few silences-before-dawn later; drifting up the street on his side.

            An umbrella, swinging like a shadow through the darkness.

            And this has happened before.

            It’s like a question, left unanswered. But questions are asked by someone, this question has no questioner.

            Is he asking the question?

            Is this tall man with red hair and freckles that form out Sirius, Orion, Ursa Major and Minor and all the sisters of the Pleiades the questioner? Is he, the old, worn-out copper? Or perhaps he is the man to answer.

            Or perhaps it is neither.

            Perhaps it is just a question to be left hanging out in the open, waiting for an answer it shall never receive? Is it a question without an answer, the question to forty-two before it has been found?

            There is a moment of breathed silence. A moment where he questions himself, every single time.

            And yet every time he goes to the window. He waits just out of reach of the light darting through the gap in the curtains. Starlight, accidentally let loose by God, leaking in through his window and never touching him.

            And this is a moment of greatest silence, and greatest thought.

            God, he’s old. He is old enough to know.

            He should be old enough to know.

            And freckles and umbrella are ghosting up the sidewalk. Three-thousand pound shoes pattering over the paving slabs, old and worn with the tread of a thousand feet. Pale skin reflecting the moonlight, as silent whispers echo through the streets.

            Greg knows this isn’t right. It’s almost creepy, really. But this is also something he could never bear to give up. These stolen moments too precious and delicate for the light of day, dancing just at the edge of his reach, always right at the forefront of his memory.

            Sometimes, while he watches and waits, Greg likes to make up stories. Make up what he would say if one day, one morning where the dawn was threatening the horizon and the last owls had gone to sleep, he opened the front door and padded out in his slippers.

            Went over to the man hovering like Hamlet, brave as Arthur yet cowardly as Dimmesdale, enfolded him in… something.

            A hug, maybe? You couldn’t really go wrong with a hug.

            Or maybe just a word or two.

            A question?

            An answer.

            Maybe even a soft, gentle kiss, worked over a cheek or a chin or a hand. Maybe even a pair of the softest lips, unsure and hesitant.

            He was coming closer.

            Three-thousand pound shoes stopped, dithered in a way they never had before. Steeling himself, yet those shoulders dropping and those eyes falling.

            A long-fingered hand reaching for the knocker.

            Please knock.

            Please, God… knock.

            I’m begging you.

            A long-fingered hand falling away once more, a pair of shoes turning back to the path.

            And the end of the journey has arrived.

***

_We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,_

_But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,_

_With an alien people clutching their gods_

_I should be glad of another death._

***

            No.

            Enough. This was not… not enough.

            Never enough.

            Feet pounding desperately in worn through slippers, cold creeping up the walls and through the curtains and between the window and the wood.

            Cold leaking through his t-shirt and into his long, woollen robe.

            And out into the night, out into that freezing night that creeps through his soul.

            Out into the silence before dawn, his footsteps heavy.

            The pause in those three-thousand pound shoes on the paving slabs, and a desperate cry.

            He knows what to do now. He knows that he must call out, and that when he calls out the pinstriped man with the red hair and the freckles of a thousand Population III stars, all the photons in the Cosmic Microwave Background... that man will stop, will turn, will look at him with grey eyes the colour of a storm in the night.

            And he must reach for that long-fingered hand and press a kiss there that will begin the rest of his life just as a gallant knight lays down his sword for his King.

            It shall all begin with a desperate cry and the pounding of two-penny slippers over the paving slabs.

            ‘Mycroft!’

**Author's Note:**

> References, and Author's commentary on their use:
> 
> T.S. Eliot - Journey of the Magi  
> This piece is based mainly around this, comparing Greg to the worn out Magus at the end of the journey to meet the Christ child. At the end of the poem, the Magus reminisces about all he has lost for seeing the child, and there is that sense that the Magus is old, just as Greg is old. Or at least, he feels old. 
> 
> Vincent Starrett - The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes  
> At the end of this book, Starrett makes a comment that I think makes a really beautiful ending to a part of Holmes and Watson's lives; "Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease...So they still live for all that love them well; in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895." It's a very secular, closed image of Watson and Holmes, giving the image of them sitting together quietly chatting after a case, in a warm flat by themselves. It's sweet, and warm, and homely, and something Greg feels like he's been deprived of, and wants desperately to be a part of. 
> 
> Shakespeare - Macbeth  
> Greg's talking about bravery, about Macduff storming the castle to defeat Macbeth at the end of the play. I think the reason's fairly obvious...
> 
> Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale  
> Again, this is about bravery, but rather the small acts of bravery, like when Offred (the narrator in the red dress with wings around her face) steals the butter to soften her skin, or the flower from the vase in the kitchen. It's also a bit about small acts of bravery being as important as the big ones. One of my other stories; A Silver Knight, is about large acts of bravery and rebellion mixed in with the small ones, but these stories are just the small acts of bravery, like those in The Handmaid's Tale. 
> 
> Shakespeare - Hamlet  
> This is about cowardice. Hamlet dithers for a good three hours on whether to believe the ghost, and only in the end does he choose bravery. Arguably he's a coward for not acting sooner, just like Greg feels like he's a coward for not acting to pursue Mycroft sooner, only doing it at the eleventh hour. 
> 
> Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage  
> Henry (the soldier in the story), flees from the Civil War in the USA. He spends most of the book wallowing in shame, as Greg's doing here, and guilt for abandoning the army in an enormous act of cowardice. It's only towards the end of the novel that he begins to act outside his own interest, and even then it's only arguably to serve his own interests. Greg's feeling a great deal of shame and cowardice for not acting sooner when he sees Mycroft outside his apartment, just as Henry does. 
> 
> Nathaniel Hawthorne - the Scarlet Letter  
> The reference here is to Arthur Dimmesdale, the ordained Puritan minister in the Scarlet Letter. The reference being is that he experiences a great deal of conflict between his godly beliefs and his own realisation of hypocrisy and thereby sin. Greg himself also feels a certain conflict between what he wants and what he feels he is entitled to, as well as the cowardly aspect of his actions. Just like Dimmesdale, he doesn't really have the courage to stand up for what he wants, who he wants, but unlike Dimmesdale does, in the end, figure his shit out. 
> 
> T.S. Eliot - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock  
> This reference to disturbing the universe is to tie this work to the other one in this series, Prufrock; about Mycroft's perspective. 
> 
> Lee Child - Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher)  
> People love this series. I don't begrudge them that. But after like... the nineteenth one, it starts to get a bit annoyingly obnoxious. Gone Tomorrow isn't really worth the read, but as a thriller it's okay, I suppose. Very by-the-numbers. The cover is just as Greg describes it, and the content isn't really much better. Thematically, it doesn't have much to do with this piece, but it does kind of represent something worn out, and a bit old, just like Greg feels he is. 
> 
> Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody  
> Bohemian Rhapsody is a bit of a piecemeal, fragmented just like this piece is supposed to be. It's like following realistic human thought, fragmented and strange, jumping around the place. Greg's thoughts do jump around a great deal, as human thought does. 
> 
> Biblical reference  
> "Fight the good fight"... this one's fairly obvious. 
> 
> A note on the physics at the end  
> A Population III star is one of the very earliest stars to ever form about 10^9 years after the Big Bang.  
> The Cosmic Microwave Background is the light left over from the Big Bang that's only just reaching Earth.
> 
> Again, I reckon that pretty much covers it. If I've missed anything you'd like me to explain, leave a comment and I'll hopefully reply.


End file.
